Thursday, March 31, 2011

I am a bit miffed at myself. When I first heard about the Crystal Brush painting competition and its $10,000 grand prize I decided to go to Adepticon to compete. Not because I had any delusions of winning, mind you... I just wanted to be part of the moment (so to speak) and to see what would undoubtedly be some world class miniatures.

Instead, I will be sitting home, voting for my favorite entry via CMON, and merely wishing I was there. Perhaps I will employ some sort of food-based solace.

I still plan on going to Chicago for Games Day and hopefully incrementing my Golden Demon count. Maybe I should focus this weekend on getting those entries closer to completion. Or maybe I'll just sit around and read the Malifaux rulebook. So many choices.

Just me and Jimmy tonight. I worked on my Elf Blade Mistress a little.

I completed more of the gaunt unit from Hive Fleet Emervac. These are a few machine painting steps away from being done. I really can't, in good conscience, start painting any of the cool Eldar I traded for this paint job until I finish them!

Jimmy added spines and more spines to his Kroot-a-saurus. "Kroot Warbeast" he corrects me. Yeah, I'm going with Kroot-a-saurus. Ha!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

I am at 99 followers now, and as I mentioned in a previous post, I plan on giving something away when I get to 100. What am I giving away? I haven't decided yet, but it will be something painted by me. Exactly what will be dependent on the winner, since I want it to be something to match their faction/army/interest/whatever.

So here's the deal. At some point during the day that I reach or exceed 100 followers I will capture the list and work with Auberoun over at The Digital Waaagh to randomly select a follower. Yes, that means there may be over 100 entrants when I capture the list. That's fine. Anyway, I will communicate with the winner, I will decide what sort of prize would be good for that user and then I will prepare and send the prize at no expense to the winner.

In addition, to commemorate the centennial follower mark, I am going to prepare (at some point) a "100 follower" mini, to be passed on to a fellow blogger. When that mini is done, I will make another post on how to entry that one. The basic idea is that I pass this on to someone, and they pass it on to someone else when they reach 100 followers, and so on.

So here's your chance for something free.

Oh, some fine print.... I reserve the right to pick another winner if I pick you and you don't respond within a reasonable amount of time... like a few weeks. Seriously, I'd if I'm going to give something away I'd like it to be to someone who actually pays a little attention.

EDIT: Auberoun and I have selected a winner! I have emailed the lucky follower (sorry if it wasn't you!) and will keep you all posted here.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

My record is now officially 0/9, even after I declared the last battle results nullified because the winning move was not legal according to the FAQ. Instead of a play-by-play I figure I'll just explain to you how I lost this particular match. This happens often enough now that I could probably make a regular feature of it.

So we start out with a rough representation of the battlefield. The Spriggan is mostly scrapped, and neither the Devastator nor the Guardian have a scratch. I'm thinking the old man has a nice safe spot behind the Avatar. After all, who is going to risk taking a POW20 (w/ Eye of Menoth) free strike? Karchev had already taken a fair bit of pounding, so another good hit would mean disabled systems.

The correct answer is nobody, because nobody has to. Sliding around to the side, Karchev can advance until only a small portion of him is in the Avatar's front arc. He hasn't left the Avatar's melee range, so no free strike. It puts him to just within reach of Severius, and he proceeds to make paste of the old man.

What I should have done is pivot the Avatar about 45 degrees to its right, thereby ensuring that Karchev would take a free strike if he tried to slip past. Either that, or keep my warcaster way, way back. The latter may not have worked, since my back was against a table edge and there really wasn't anywhere to go. I could have used Vision, but with 5 focus available to him he could afford to get more than one decent swing with axe-of-doom and still finish the job.

Also, as a side note, can someone tell me why the Avatar rolls 4 focus on turn one and then 2 focus for the rest of the game? Seriously, I would love a 4 focus Avatar turn someday when he's actually fighting something.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Hobbying was a good time tonight, with newcomer Andrew joining me, Seth, Jimmy and Mike. Much coffee was consumed. It was loud. Things got painted. Poor Andrew had to ensure everyone showing him my painted models.

I worked mostly on "Hive Fleet Emervac" gaunts. Seth worked more on chaos warriors, and his "Harry the Hammer" shield that he is painstakingly trying to make look like Alexi Z's version in the CMON annual. His "lava" shield is coming along nicely.

Jimmy sculpted a new face on a dollar-store dinosaur to match his Kroot mercenary army. Everyone thought it was pretty cool!

Finally, Mike worked on some Tau and Andrew worked on his chaos warriors. I put some paint on a very old Elf Blade Mistress Ral Partha mini.

After some consideration, we decided to move hobby night back to Thursday. I had hoped to start going to an Android development group Thursday nights, butit just never happened.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

I've been toying with different ideas to add content to this blog, and video tutorials are one of the options I've considered. The problem is that my brain has been calibrated to the Miniature Mentor series in terms of video quality and camera work, and anything I produce won't be nearly that level.

So my question to you, interwebs, is whether this video quality is high enough to be useful.

Consider what you are looking to get out of a painting tutorial. Could you see what you need to see at this level of zoom and focus? Is the verbal description more important? What are you actually looking to learn? (Those of you who aren't already far better at painting than I am, anyway.)

For fun tonight, I decided to try a weathering technique that sounded like it had potential. The premise is to paint an item metallic, wash it and stipple it for rust, then apply liquid mask, paint a color over the whole thing and remove the mask. In theory, it would look like the paint had rubbed away to reveal the metal. This would hopefully give a more realistic look than the "paint wear over the color" method.

Plans sometimes go awry.

Here are each of the steps.

We begin with a garden variety IoB rat ogre

paint the arm guard Reaper shadowed steel

highlight with Reaper honed steel and polished silver

wash with Gyphonne Sepia stipple with some VGC hot orange for rust. Not too over the top.

Here is where we start to get fancy with the mask, preserving the weathered metal areas.

Here is where things start to go wrong. That huge blob is the dried liquid mask that I had to extract from the bottle to get to usable liquid. Upon trying to apply it with a brush, I realized that I could not get it off the brush. I am so glad I didn't use my W&Ns7 to apply this junk. I still don't think I have all of it off my cheap brush, even with hot water and dish soap. Seriously, this stuff is brush poison.

paint a horrible thick green over the whole thing. Okay, maybe "horrible thick" wasn't what I had in mind.

The prior step took so long that I just slapped on the green. I was getting frustrated with everything being sticky around my painting area. That stuff just corrupts everything it gets near.

rub the crap out of the horrible green until you can see the primer color again.

And the fact that it doesn't come off was the icing on the cake. I'm pretty sure my earlier attempt at this with a tank was much easier to do, so the age of the liquid mask must matter a lot. This time was torture to remove it. After colour shapers wouldn't work I finally resorted to a toothbrush and rubbing off way more than I needed to.

I can not stress enough how sticky everything was when doing this. I ended up throwing away the paper towels I was working on and my palette sheet just to ensure I didn't get any of that crap on my brushes. As interesting as the idea was to start, I think I'll just paint on wear.

Monday, March 21, 2011

After our very unsuccessful attempt at playing a lunchtime game of Warmachine Friday, Brian accidentally picked up my two Privateer Press dice and put them with his own. Later in the day he stopped by with all four dice.

"So how are we going to tell whose are whose?" he asked jokingly.

"Here, I can tell," I said, and rolled all four dice. They came up two 1's, a 4 and a 5.
I grabbed the ones showing snake eyes. "These are definitely mine."

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Earlier, before the new hardcover book, I lamented that goblins had no special place in the O&G army. Every interesting advantage (fanatics, netters, hating dwarfs) seemed to be given to their subterranean cousins. In 8th edition rules, the Night Goblins hand weapon/shield combo is also more effective in close combat if you want to stick to the three point models. Goblins needed love. They needed something to make them unique in the O&G book. Did they get it? A little, but not as much as I would have liked.

Comparing the two books, goblins don't appear to have changed much. The basic model has the same stat line. The options cost half as much, so now a more reasonable equipped model with spear and shield costs a point less than in the old book. Night goblins, on the other hand, can get spears for free but can't take light armor. It basically makes spear/shield goblins more expensive than a similarly equipped night goblin, but having a point higher leadership. All command has been made more expensive as well, standardizing on 10 pts per model instead of different costs for boss, musician or standard bearer. The one thing that goblins did get is a new unit addition, the Nasty Skulker. These are basically close combat specialist goblins that get three attacks and killing blow for the first combat they are revealed. The combination of better armor (for extra cost), a few extra attacks in the front rank (for extra cost) and a better leadership than night goblins, regular goblins might have a little more punch in close combat. What the nasty skulkers don't do is add any staying power for a tarpit horde. You aren't planning on these units winning combat, in fact they may be engaged on multiple fronts, so "steadfast" with the general and standard bearer nearby are the keys to survival. Some extra attacks in the front rank probably aren't as useful as another 8 or so goblins to keep the ranks filled. I really like the skulker models too, and will likely be getting some just to paint. I also eagerly await a new goblin plastic kit that actually has the options to kit them out with hand weapon!

The wolf riders were also on my look-at list. I have a grand scheme to create a fully mounted goblin army, using all wolf riders and chariots. So far I have painted one model. My plans move slowly. The wolf rider basic model is down to 10 pts, a significant 2 points less than previous. This model also doesn't come with the default weapon, but cavalry spears are good to have when you are S3. A nice addition is that giving them shields no longer removes the "fast cavalry" rule from them. Wolf chariots got a nice little bump. They are a full 10 points cheaper than in the prior book, and can be fielded in units of 1-3. This gets you a not insignificant maximum of 450 points of chariots for your three duplicate special choices, nearly the maximum allowed for a 2000 point list. Throw in a couple lord/hero choices with chariots and you have a huge rolling army. Effective? Who knows? Impressive? Hecks, yeah!

A couple more observations about the book. The spells of the little waaagh seem very augment/hex oriented, which I really liked. They do things like let goblins re-roll to-hit and to-wound rolls when flighting on flank or rear. That's really cool. The magic item list .... what happened?! They went from 40 unique items in the last book to a pathetic 8 in this book. I know the main rule book has a lot more items in this edition than last, but seriously! And of the 8, two are banners that can only be taken by a particular type of goblin (one regular goblin, one night goblin), one can only be taken by savage orc shaman and two others are 100 point monstrosities. Maybe this is a game design decision to keep things simple, I dunno.

In terms of photos, one of my favorite parts of the books, there are zero pictures of regular trolls, despite them being a special choice now. Stone trolls only make an appearance in the corner of a full-army shot.

So just doing a little math, for my mounted goblin army I could field wolf chariots for 300, Grom for another 285, 4 units of 25 wolf riders (spear, shield, command) for 1320 and still have about 100 points left over for a shaman on a wolf. Sounds like a fun idea, but I can't see myself painting 100 wolf riders this year. Or dropping a couple hundred bucks on wolf chariots. Or not getting distracted by my Skaven or Eldar or Protectorate of Menoth or Marines or Android development. I mean, let's be realistic here.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Each week, more or less, a few guys come over to my house to paint and hobby. We have a floating group of 6, and typically 3 or 4 are there each week (including myself.) I have kids to put to bed, so the group comes to my house. It's a nice arrangement for me, and they seem to enjoy it. I dispense a lot of painting advice and get to see what everyone is working on. I think I will start to chronicle what we work on here. If I remember, I might even take photos.

I really needed last night. The mood was light and we painted our little toy soldiers while Jimmy's wife made fun of us (in a good natured way) for playing with toys. I mentioned in the last post that we had some family tragedy, so the mood had been quite a bit more somber recently. On Tuesday, March 8, my three year old nephew died suddenly. We basically moved in with my wife's brother and sister-in-law on Wednesday and didn't go home until Wednesday of this week, the day after the funeral. My three kids are each slightly older than their three other kids, and they have all grown up together, so the kids were able to play and keep each other busy while the parents made arrangements. I think staying there was as much to comfort us as it was for them. "Danger Johnny" (as his brothers named him) was a fantastically vibrant and energetic child, getting into absolutely everything. I so clearly remember him crashing around the house with the kids, jumping in my lap to say hi, then squirming out of my arms to go chasing after the kids again. He was something else, and we're all missing him terribly.

So after all that, and a funeral that included the funeral director's cell phone ending up buried at the bottom of the grave, we're all home and I enjoyed goofing off with my hobby group. I had no real focus, so I just started painting models as the mood hit me.

I started with Eiryss' cloak. Then started some freehand swirls with VGC livery green. I didn't like that, so I made vines by adding leaves of GW snot green. They didn't show up well enough, so I outlines the leaves in white. I still didn't like it, so I extended the vines out and eventually adding little flowers of white and GW blood red.

I also put some paint on the Harbinger of Menoth. I've had these two models for years without doing more than priming them, so they both were dusty. After brushing all the dust off I realized how bad the priming job on the Harbinger is. Her face had a paint texture on it that ended up looking like acne after putting a little flesh color down. I guess she's supposed to be a teenager, so it makes sense in a way. Why wouldn't the floating girl who acts as a voice for a god not have acne? It's also attire for a teenager that would make the authors of (warning: NSFW) "Go Make Me A Sandwich" pull their hair out.

I also put together a unit of 10 Flameguard Cleansers. I am greatly looking forward to getting off a CRA with them at POW 22, AOE 4" and RAT 15. Oh, yes. That might even hit Lylyth.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

I suppose something had to happen since we don't have the Wraithlord to kickaround anymore.

A deadly chain reaction of shelf content tipping resulted in the Ultraforge Treewoman plunging off the shelf and hitting the floor. She missed the dogs' water bowl. I guess treewomen don't like swimming as much as Wraithlords do. Either that, or they have worse aim.

Tonight is hobby night, for the first time in a couple weeks. We've had some real tragedy in the family lately, and I will be sharing that a little later.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Because IP laws are vague when it comes to parody! (Or are they? You didn't hear me say that!)

So let's start with "Barfy the Troll" ...

We'll put a word bubble off to the upper right of his head. Start by loading the image in Gimp.

Then use the "rectangle select tool" (shortcut R) to draw a selection box for our speech bubble.

Once you draw the rectangle check the "Rounded Corners" box and increase the radius until the box looks like a bubble.

Now we'll add the little arrow to the bubble. Choose the "Free Select" tool (shortcut F). Here's an important step: now click on the title bar of the image. If the image is the selected window, holding shift will make the little lasso tool get a "plus" sign next to it. We want to add to the selection, so that's good! Hold down shift and click three points to make the arrow. Then release shift and click on the first point of the triangle to complete the selection adding. We now should have a shape that is our word bubble, but it's still just a selection.

Now choose the bucket fill tool (shortcut shift+B) and select "Fill whole selection" with "Affected Area (Shift)" Make sure your color of choice for the word bubble is the currently selected color, and then click within the word bubble. There! Now our word bubble is filled, but we want to add a border so that is shows up against the backdrop.

Open the "Channels, Layers and Paths" window and choose the paths tab. Since we have a selection open, we have the option to turn our selection into a path. Click the appropriate icon to do that.

Now that our selection is a path, we can stroke along the path to draw an outline. Click the "stroke along path" button (right next to "selection to path") making sure your outline color is the active color. Choose line thickness and click "stroke."

Our word bubble is done, but we need a humorous caption or nobody will know how clever we are. Choose the text tool and click in the word bubble. Use a lifetime of internet usage to come up with something hilarious, perhaps a reference to a 1980 movie starring Leslie Nielson. Change the font size as needed in the dialog to fit your caption in the bubble. If you need to, use more than one text object.

Now you are done! Save your creation and prepare for the hilarity that will ensue.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

I got the preview email from Games Workshop for the new Grey Knights models. They look pretty cool, but I can't resist making a few humorous observations. I'll let the Ordo Malleus speak for themselves.

Not a fan of 90's manga? google it

and a book, apparently!

Yes, you are Burny the Bunny. Congratulations.

Maybe I'm nitpicking on that last one, but if you are going to drill storm bolter barrels for your studio army make a template or something. Those look about like my pin-vise workmanship.

Also, super giant robot exo-skeletons? I dunno. We're taking one scary step toward Dreadnoughts being able to link up to form Volton.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

March Game Day is over, and it was quite a day. We had a new player pick up Warmachine using a Cryx battle box left over by someone who moved out of the area. We saw our largest single Mk II battle. We tasted a number of homebrew and commercial beers. I painted Typhon.

First game of the day was 35 pts of Khador vs. my Protectorate. Epic Irusk and the High Reclaimer. As you can see from my deployment I was planning on sending out a lot of cloud templates. Once again, I took the bait and sent the Avatar running off after a 2-point Widowmaker solo. With stealth and his 14" POW12 shot, I just did not want that guy popping the HC every turn. As it is I make an error in the ash cloud placement that left HC open to a mortar shot. With "fire for effect" in play, it took nearly half his health. That solo could not be in my back line. So, 11 pts wasted chasing a 2 pt solo.

We inched toward each other, eventually meeting on my right (near side of the shot.) Iron Fang Pikemen put up a decent showing, trading about half their number to kill a unit of zealots. Bastions must have forgotten to take their vitamins because they missed every swing against the IFP's. The Reckoner and the Spriggan were toe to toe, the Spriggan's charge not disabling any of the Reckoner's systesms.

Let's take a second to ask: What do you expect a heavy jack with three focus to do to an opponent? For the Reckoner (P+S 17 attacks, made P+S 19 with the choir) I was expecting to disassemble the thing. I should have done about 20 points of damage to it, ideally disabling the right arm or cortex. The 8 or so points that I actually did were disappointing.

To finish the game, Brian used Irusk's spell that lets him move 'jacks out of activation to slide the Spriggan into the Reckoner, using bulldoze to slide it over a couple inches and open up a charge lane to get at the HC. Stomp, stomp, stomp, swing, splat. Game Over.

NEWS FLASH!!! From the PP FAQ regarding bulldoze: "When this model advances into B2B contact with an enemy model during its activation, it can push that model up to 2˝ directly away from it." (Emphasis mine)The Spriggan could not have bumped the Reckoner out of the way as a result of Energizer. I revise my record to 0/8 and I demand a rematch!

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The beer tasting continued.
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Next I played a 15 point intro game vs. Cryx with the new player. The game ended when the Khador player looked over the battlefield and recommended to the Cryx player to use Deneghra's "ghost walk" spell to allow a Deathripper to charge over a linear obstacle. Oops. I forgot about ghost walk. So he slid in with a spray to pop Severius for a few points, then charged with the aforementioned Deathripper to finish the old man off.

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The beer tasting continued.
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Next, new Cryx guy Josh and relative newcomer Legion guy Matt had a 15 point game. I was coaching Josh, but he didn't need much strategic guidance, just some rules clarification. Josh managed to slip some arc-node chicken-jacks through the line to blast Lylyth with venom one turn, then slip a Defiler in to deliver the kill shot. The game was getting quite raucous, and even turned into a drinking game wherein both players drank (about a 4 oz tasting glass) whenever a model was removed from the table.

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The beer tasting continued.
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After the game, someone mentioned the fact that I had brought my paints. Was I expecting to paint something?! My answer: Heck yeah, now I am. Give me something to paint! I'll paint it in one hour! Matt promptly handed me Typhon. He had to pick the big one didn't he?

One hour is not very long to go from assembled and unprimed to fully painted it turns out. Here was the result.

Good from far, but far from good.

The basic recipe for a one-hour Typhon is Charadon Granie chitin, heavily highlighted with a 50/50 P3 bootstrap leather/charadon granite. The skin is Reaper Leather white, highlighted with skull white. The claws were skull white with a sepia wash. Teeth were skull white. I wish I had done more with them now that I'm looking at the photo.

The general consensus was positive. Basically the "if my army looked like that I'd be happy" sentiment. I showed it to my wife, who was upstairs hanging out with Brian's wife. She was not terrible impressed.

On the way home we were talking about the events of the day.

"Everyone seemed pretty happy with the way Typhon came out after just an hour of painting."

"Yeah, but they were pretty drunk."

"Oh, yeah."

Drunk or not, the Protectorate is now 0/9 and someone walked out of there with a painted heavy warbeast.

Friday, March 04, 2011

See how cleverly Kreoss sends his forces off to
his left so he can engage the enemy alone?

Today, a group of filthy mercenaries invaded the conference table in my office. My Menites mustered forces to repel the invaders. There was a swamp involved.

Clearly this photo shows that all other armies pale in comparison to the might of the Protectorate!

In battle.... well a bit different. I repeated my common mistake. I separated my force, put my caster in harm's way and ended up having to make the choice between getting gunned down at 15" or get splattered standing toe-to-toe with a heavy 'jack. Kreoss, ever the exemplar, went down swinging.

They may have lost, but they lost looking good.

Kreoss goes down swinging. His MAT7 vs the Avalancher DEF9 means
that he'd only need snake-eyes to miss. Yup, there they are.
To add insult to injury, the Avalancherkilled him with a shield. A shield.

...but who is the best looking army on the table?
I'm talking to you primer-white mercs!

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Work had issues today, so I decided to call off the lunch game rather than give the appearance of shirking. The newly painted choir was disappointed. Hear their song of woe!

Quick question for anyone who reads these.... is there a particular type of model you are interested in seeing a step-by-step walk-through for? I'd be interested to see what interests you, and if it interests you enough to potentially buy a pdf guide (fairly cheap.) Let me know!

Well, their first painted game anyway. Tomorrow is our traditional Warmachine/Hordes lunch day, and I have a fully painted 15 point list ready! This is my first time fielding a fully painted Warmachine force of any size, so I'm quite excited. I'm guessing that the Protectorate will march to a full color victory. After all, I've lost the last 6 games.... statistically speaking I'm almost guaranteed to win, right?

Painting was a lot of fun tonight, with Designer7x and Jimmy talking battletech/mechwarrior almsot all night. Ah, reminds me of my days in the lounge of Wadsworth Hall, playing battletech with the PFRC gang. D7x has a cool looking building he's been working on. He cut a picture of a futuristic city scape up to paste onto the windows of the hanger, making it appear as if the windows are mirrored. It's a very cool effect. I also found out that Jimmy was a national Mage Knight champion (playing under the name "Creature".) Go figure!

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

So instead of participating in "Old Stuff Day" by reposting a blog entry, I'm putting one of my very old minis on display.

I got this fellow at a Paint-and-Take sponsored by Black Lightning at my local hobby shop in 2006. I think he was supposed to be a dark elf, but I didn't know that at the time, hence the color scheme. It occured to me about halfway through that this was the first time I had ever tried to paint a human(oid) face. Go figure.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

The choir is coming along. The goal is a complete squad of 4 for gaming Thursday.

I've also completed the Redeemer and have put a little more work into the Avatar of Menoth. I'm saving the stained glass areas until I am ready to photograph progress for a step-by-step.

In fact, I'm getting a reasonable number of painted jacks available to field. The Redeemer makes 5. Here are the other 4.

In addition, I have 5 painted casters to field. I'm still not sure about Feora. I just didn't feel like I "got" that model the first time through. Maybe I'll go back and try and salvage a decent paint job out of her later.

On the non-Warmachine front, I am done with the Black Templar Dreadnought. At least until I find aspects of him that I want to repaint.

And finally, a sneak peak at something I've been working on a little at a time...